Jane Smiley | Author

Jane Smiley
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of fiction and nonfiction; political activist

Latest News & Events

Litquake Presents Jane Smiley In Conversation with Karen Joy Fowler

Sep.18.2011

Litquake Presents Jane Smiley In Conversation with Karen Joy Fowler

Jane Smiley’s new novel Private Life is rich with California history. Best known for her acclaimed The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler also made waves in 2002 with the release of Sister Noon, set in 1800s San Francisco. These two brilliant writers will discuss the nature of historical fiction. How important are facts? How much research is required to create a believable fictional universe?

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PUBLISHED: Sep.11.2012

Pie in the Sky

Abby Lovitt doesn't realize how unprepared she is when she takes her beloved horse, True Blue, to a clinic led by the most famous equestrian anyone knows. The biggest surprise, though, is that Sophia, the girl who never makes a mistake, suddenly makes so many that she stops riding. Who will ride her horse? Abby's dad seems to think it will be Abby. Pie in the Sky is the most...

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PUBLISHED: Oct.26.2010

A Good Horse

This sequel to The Georges and the Jewels (2009) is Smiley at her finest--detailed, nuanced, absorbing. Abby Lovitt's eighth-grade year starts out feeling less tumultuous than the year before: Her school life is more settled, her parents more at peace and Ornery George, a horse she struggled with, has been sold. Though she continues to ride several horses a day, two in...

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PUBLISHED: Oct.19.2010

The Man Who Invented the Computer: The Biography of John Atanasoff, Digital Pioneer

From one of our most acclaimed novelists, a David-and-Goliath biography for the digital age.One night in the late 1930s, in a bar on the Illinois-Iowa border, John Vincent Atanasoff, a professor of physics at Iowa State University, after a frustrating day performing tedious mathematical calculations in his lab, hit on the idea that the binary number system and electronic...

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PUBLISHED: May.04.2010

Private Life

In her latest novel, after Ten Days in the Hills (2007), the Pulitzer Prize-winning author offers a cold-eyed view of the compromises required by marriage while also providing an intimate portrait of life in the Midwest and West during the years 1883-1942. By the time she reaches the age of 27, Margaret Mayfield has known a lot of tragedy in her life. She has lost two brothers...

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PUBLISHED: Sep.08.2009

The Georges and Jewels

A Pulitzer Prize winner makes her debut for young readers. Abby Lovitt has been riding horses for as long as she can remember, but Daddy hasn't let her name a single one. He calls all their geldings George and their mares Jewel and warns her not to get attached. The horses are there on the ranch to be sold, plain and simple. But with all the stress at school (the Big Four-...

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PUBLISHED: Sep.27.2011

True Blue

True Blue is a beauty, a dappled gray, and when Abby gets to take him to her family's ranch, she can hardly believe her luck. The horse needs a home: his owner—a woman brand new to the riding stable--was tragically killed in a car crash and no one has claimed him. Daddy is wary, as always. But Abby is smitten. True Blue is a sweetheart, and whenever Abby calls out, "Blue, Blue...

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PUBLISHED: Feb.13.2007

Ten Days in the Hills

A glorious new novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner: a big, smart, bawdy tale of love and war, sex and politics, friendship and betrayal—and the allure of the movies. With Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron as her model, Jane Smiley takes us through ten transformative, unforgettable days in the Hollywood hills. It is the morning after the 2003 Academy Awards. Max—an Oscar-winning...

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PUBLISHED: Oct.03.2005

Best New American Voices 2006 (Edited)

The best new American voices are heard here first. Writers like Julie Orringer, Adam Johnson, William Gay, David Benioff, Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Maile Meloy, Amanda Davis, Jennifer Vanderbes, and John Murray are just some of the acclaimed authors whose early work has appeared in this series since its launch in 2000. The new volume features a new crop of promising stories selected...

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PUBLISHED: Sep.13.2005

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel

Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling novelist Jane Smiley celebrates the novel—and takes us on an exhilarating tour through one hundred of them—in this seductive and immensely rewarding literary tribute. In her inimitable style—exuberant, candid, opinionated—Smiley explores the power of the novel, looking at its history and variety, its cultural impact, and just how it works its...

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PUBLISHED: Nov.09.2004

Duplicate Keys

They were six friends from the Midwest who moved to New York City with high hopes of making it big in the music industry. Although the dream had faded, they had all remained friends—or so it seemed. One brilliant day, two of the group were shot in an apartment for which they all had duplicate keys. A riveting suspense story about the emotional aftermath of murder—the jealousy and...

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PUBLISHED: Apr.13.2004

A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money, and Luck

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres gallops into territory she first explored in her acclaimed best-selling novel Horse Heaven (“Deeply satisfying . . . a smart, warmhearted, winning book” –New York Times Book Review) with this irresistible account of her lifelong love affair with horses. Smiley draws upon her firsthand knowledge of horses, as well as the wisdom...

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PUBLISHED: Dec.02.2003

A Thousand Acres

Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his one-thousand-acre farm—one of the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa—to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father’s generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his...

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PUBLISHED: Apr.22.2003

Good Faith

The introduction, discussion questions, suggested reading list, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group’s reading of Jane Smiley’s Good Faith. In this new novel she brings her extraordinary gifts to the seductive, wishful, wistful world of real estate, in which the sport of choice is a mind game.

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PUBLISHED: May.09.2002

Charles Dickens

With the delectable wit, unforgettable characters, and challenging themes that have won her a Pulitzer Prize and national bestseller status, Jane Smiley naturally finds a kindred spirit in the author of such classics as Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol. Because “his novels shaped his life as much as his life shaped his novels,” Smiley’s Charles Dickens is at once a...

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PUBLISHED: Apr.04.2000

Horse Heaven

This novel about horses and their breeders, owners, trainers, grooms, jockeys, traders, bettors, and other turf-obsessed humans is a winner. Smiley knows a prodigious amount about Thoroughbreds, and she is as good at describing the stages of their lives, their temperaments, and personalities as she is in chronicling the ambitions, financial windfalls and ruins, love affairs,...

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PUBLISHED: Dec.29.1998

All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton

Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres, returns with a novel that explores one of the crucial moments in American history and culture, the conflict between abolitionists and proslavery settlers over the future of the Kansas Territory in 1855-56. Smiley’s narrative goes far beyond any simple historical novelization or any didactic examination of the...

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PUBLISHED: Apr.13.1998

At Paradise Gate

In this brilliant novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author Jane Smiley delves into the domestic drama of the Robison family. While seventy-seven-year-old Ike Robison is dying in his bedroom upstairs, his wife defends the citadel of their marriage against an ill-considered, albeit loving, invasion by their three middle-aged daughters and their twenty-three-year-old...

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PUBLISHED: Mar.18.1996

Moo

Nestled in the heart of the Midwest, amid cow pastures and waving fields of grain, lies Moo University, a distinguished institution devoted to the art and science of agriculture. Here, among an atmosphere rife with devious plots, mischievous intrigue, lusty liaisons, and academic one-upmanship, Chairman X of the Horticulture Department harbors a secret fantasy to kill the dean; Mrs...

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PUBLISHED: Mar.09.1993

Barn Blind

The verdant pastures of a farm in Illinois have the placid charm of a landscape painting. But the horses that graze there have become the obsession of a woman who sees them as the fulfillment of every wish: to win, to be honored, to be the best. Her ambition is the galvanizing force in Jane Smiley’s first novel, a force that will drive a wedge between her and her family, and bring...

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PUBLISHED: Oct.14.1989

Ordinary Love and Good Will

Two novellas: Ordinary Love At a reunion with her grown children, a woman recalls the long-ago affair that ended her relationship with their father—and changed all their lives irrevocably. Good Will Despite the carefully self-sufficient life he has designed for his small family, a man discovers that even the right choices have unexpected consequences—sometimes heart-breaking ones.

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PUBLISHED: Apr.01.1988

The Greenlanders

Jane Smiley, the Pultizer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres, gives us a magnificent novel of fourteenth century Greenland. Rich with fascinating detail about the day-to-day joys and innumerable hardships of remarkable people, The Greenlanders is also the compelling story of one family—proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads...

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PUBLISHED: Dec.23.1987

Catskill Crafts: Artisans of the Catskill Mountains

This book reveals the special qualities that have enabled artisans of the Catskill region to develop and sustain a remarkable craft tradition, and it details all the processes involved in making handwoven cloths, ceramics, and other items.

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PUBLISHED: Aug.12.1987

Age of Grief

Here is a stunning collection of five stories and a novella that confirms Jane Smiley’s place as one of our most gifted writers. In The Age of Grief, a man meditates on the vagaries of love and family life. Certain that his wife has fallen in love with someone else—and been spurned by him—he tries to recover the good-humored, matter-of-fact heart of the mmarriage where he can keep...

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Jane's Latest Blogs

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Nov.29.2009 - 10:24 am

Justice for Gary McKinnon!

HI, Everyone-- I rarely do this, but I do feel that the issue of Gary McKinnon, which I wrote about today on the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/stop-...

Dec.07.2007 - 6:20 pm

A Place on the Track

I love to hang out in the betting halls or walk between the paddock and the railing. I love to look at the jockeys, at the trainers; I love the feeling of the grandstand looming...

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Nov.03.1991

Published by The New York Times

[T]his powerful and poignant book doesn't lean against [King] Lear for support. Jane Smiley takes the truths therein and lights them up her way, making the perils of family and...

Audio & Video

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Video: Shakespeare: From Page to Stage with Jane Smiley

Video: Authors@Google Series: Jane Smiley

Audio: Jane Smiley at Litquake 2007

About Jane

Jane Smiley was born in Los Angeles, California, moved to the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri as an infant, and lived there through grammar school and high school (The John Burroughs School). After getting her Bachelor of Art at Vassar College in 1971, she...

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Jane SmileyPulitzer Prize-winning author of fiction and nonfiction; political activist

Latest News & Events

Litquake Presents Jane Smiley In Conversation with Karen Joy Fowler

Featured Works

Jane's Latest Blogs

Published Reviews

Audio & Video

About Jane

Jane Smiley
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of fiction and nonfiction; political activist